Iron_Dreamer

Best wishes for a epic birthday, Jeff!

Root, titanium backup, dropbox?

Yep, I've installed Windows7 onto a 16GB CF card, and had plenty of space to spare once the uncessary files were swept away. But the fact that Windows will default to chewing up 32GB of my SSD space, when installed onto a system with 16GB RAM, is rather annoying, not that it's not easily fixed. I just wish it was one MORE thing that had to be fixed. I'm getting to used to the (general) ease of Android.

I'd just wait for the inevitable Haswell version later this year. But at any rate, it is annoying how huge Windows is, and how huge its' genenrally unnecessary page and hibernation files are by default.

Eh, I've fallen behind posting my recent pics here. Here's a few to make up for it, with more to come. These are from my post-CES trip, in Arizona, Nevada, and Utah, respectively:

Happy Birthday!

Have a salty, crispy fun-filled b-day, Grahame! See you in a few weeks, mate!

When I saw the Soul poster on the side of the CES registration booth showing Tebow, Bolt, et al, I had a good laugh. Walking around the show, it's quite amazing just how many companies I've never heard of have popped up to sell headphones as fashion/celebrity worship items with little to no regard for anything to do with sound. Another proud triumph of marketing over technology/common sense. Bleh. And we thought Bose was bad enough 10 years ago.

Shit I am miserable at "work". Our original vision for this business went nowhere, so now we're trying to make it an e-commerce business, rather than one based on in-person customer service. Which means I get to build an e-commerce site, with no money. Yipee! I am really starting to hate PHP and CSS.

Happy birthday from DannyB.

If you need aperture speed, the Tokina is king of the hill for DX. If you don't, the Sigma 10-20 f/4-5.6 is a great bang for the buck lens, and the one that I used for a few years whilst a DX owner. Also the Sigma 8-16 f/4.5-5.6 is probably the sharpest DX UWA lens, but no filters. Those are the ones I'd consider

Just got FiOS installed at the office, it's so much nicer than the Verizon 4G Mifi we'd been using for the last 8 months!

Just take some shots at or near infinity focus, at both ends of the lens, wide open, and compare the left and right edges. If there is a major difference in sharpness, you've got a decentered element. Other than that, just check for AF accuracy, close and far, wide open, preferably with the camera in a static position to take movement out of the equation. If no issues in either regard, I'd say you're good to go. I've only ever had one lens with a decentered element (a Tamron), and one with AF that was quite inaccurate (a Sigma), so they're fairly unlikely issues.

I've never seen dust damage the front element of a lens. Perhaps if you were out shooting in a sandstorm, it might be another matter. Unless you see yourself doing a bunch of shooting in sandstorms, or at the beach (while not using any effects filters) the UV filter isn't worth it IMO.<br /><br />When I shoot at the beach, I'm almost always using a polarizer to cut reflections and deepen colors and/or an ND filter to slow shutter speed. If for some reason I wanted to do a bunch of shooting at the beach without either, I might consider a UV filter to keep the sea spray off. That's what I meant earlier.<br /><br />

The only filters I use are polarizers and ND's. I might use a UV filter to keep sea spray off the front element if I was shooting at the beach, and not using any filters for effects, but I pretty much always am. UV filters for "protection" is for the most part a scam, IMO. I've seen more cases where the a broken filter has scratched lens' front element and required it to be replaced, than I have a UV filter "saving" a lens.

Couldn't post in Firefox, kept getting the "post is empty" message. Cleared cache and cookies, problem remained. In Chrome now, and it's not an issue.

Happy Birthday Gene, it's great to hear you're doing so well.

Wow, well, sorry about the cast, but glad it's nothing worse.

Sign me up!

Ever since moving to the CAM3500 51-point system in the D700, I've had no need to use an AF beam. Unless the light is so low that a long exposure is needed (and MF is mandatory), AF is fine to get a lock without the assist beam (unless your target has no contrast) on the D700 and D800.

Happy belated, Bryan! So glad you had a fabulous time.

I've had very good success with an app called FoxFi, when I needed to tether on a non-rooted device, or a rooted device whose stock tethering wasn't working. I believe that it doesn't work on HTC devices (not that you have one anyway).

Happy Monkey Birthday Dinny!!

Happy Birthdays!!

Yeah, I know that is the point, but I have no interest whatsoever in that agenda. Maybe I'd accept the cloud if ubiquitous, high-speed, unlimited internet access were a reality, but that's far from the case.